Author: ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon

https://www.instagram.com/wolvesofgray This blog is a refugee and a survivor of the Great Tumblr Inquisition of December 17th, 2018. I am gay artist, who received training at the Rhode Island School of Design, and now, a retired high-end fine art framer living in Maryland, USA. My interests and studies in life run a wide gamut from art to history and from the scientific to the esoteric. I have been building this blog of images and texts for the last eight years. My wish is that my posts pique the interest of viewers and encourage them to experience more.

Dragon Aquamanile

Dragon Aquamanile, 1200 AD, Copper Alloy, Northern Germany, 22 x18 cm., The Cloisters Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

An aquamanile is a vessel made specifically to hold water for hand-washing. Most of the Middle-Ages aquamaniles are fashioned from copper or bronze, an alloy of copper and tin with other metals. The artists used a lost was process, a time consuming and complicated process, to fashion these hollow figures. This process has been in use since the 4th century B.C.

Calendar: November 4

A Year: Day to Day Men: 4th of November

The Heat of the Sun

November 4,1896 was the birthdate of American character actor Ian Wolfe.

Born in Illinois, Ian Wolfe worked in theater productions until 1934 when he started his career as a character actor in film and later television. Central to Wolfe’s appeal was the fact that, until he reached actual old age, he always looked considerably older than he actually was. His career lasted until the last years in his life, encompassing almost four hundred roles in television and film, including many classics.

Ian Wolfe appeared in many well known films: Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” playing Robert in the film noir spy thriller; “Rebel Without a Cause” as Dr. Minton, the astronomy professor; the role of Maggs in the 1935 “Mutiny on the Bounty”; and George Lucas’s “THX 1138”, playing the prisoner PTO.

American at birth, Ian Wolfe, because of his experience in theater, had very precise diction which caused him to be often cast as an Englishman. He appeared in the 1943 film :Sherlock Holmes in Washington” , as an antique shop clerk. He also was in the final film of the Holmes series, the 1946 “Dressed to Kill” as the Commissioner of Scotland Yard. In Billy Wilder’s “Witness for the Prosecution”, Ian Wolfe played Carter, chief clerk to Sir Wilfrid, played by Charles Laughton.

Ian Wolfe guest-starred on many television series over the course of his career. The first season of “The Lone Ranger” had him playing a crooked small town doctor attempting to swindle a man. He  appeared on the episode “The Case of the Midnight Howler” of the 1966 “Perry Mason” series. Star Trek fans will recognize him in two episodes of the original series: the 1968 “Bread and Circuses” as Septinus, and the 1969 “All Our Yesterdays” acting in the role of Mr. Atoz.

Wolfe’s last film role, at the age of 94, was as Munger in the 1990 released “Dick Tracy”, produced and directed by Warren Beatty. Ian Wolfe died a year later at the age of 95 of natural causes in January of 1992.

“Mostly, they know the face, but they don’t know the name. Some people are funny. Some are nice. They don’t try to take up your time. They say, “I see you a lot and I sure enjoy you” and they’re gone. It’s my voice, too, that people recognize. I had no idea that my voice is distinctive in any way. But people will say, “I knew you by your voice”. – Ian Wolfe

Julien Douvier

The Gifs of Julien Douvier

Julien Douvier is a freelance computer graphic artist based out of Strasbourg, France. His ability to combine well-crafted photographic compositions with just a touch of motion somewhere in the frame makes his cinemagraphs some of the most compelling. Not limited by one genre, his photographs range from landscapes and nature scenes to street photography, sometimes augmented by only the slightest bit of motion, and at other times completely wrapped up by it.

Gofs reblogged with thanks to the artist’s site https://juliendouvier.tumblr.com

Calendar: November 3

A Year: Day to Day Men: 3rd of November

The Redness of the World

November 3, 1928 was the birthdate of Japanese manga artist and film producer Osamu Tezuka.

Osamu Tezuka was born in the Osaka Perfecture of Japan. Drawing from a early age, he continued his manga skills throughout his school years, creating his first adept amateur works. In 1945, Tezuka was accepted into Osaka University in the field of medicine. It was during tihis time that he began publishing his first professional works.

After the end of World War II, at the age of seventeen, Osamu Tezuka published his first work, “Diary of Ma-chan”, a collection of four-panel comic strips about a small pre-school boy. After a discussion with fellow manga artist Shichima Sakai, Tezuka completed a manga based loosely on the famous story “Treasure Island”. This manga, entitled “Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island)”, was published and became an overnight success, starting the golden age of manga, similar to the craze in America for comic books at the time.

With the success of his manga Treasure Island, Tezuka traveled to Tokyo to seek a publisher. The publisher Shinseikaku agreed to purchase “The Strange Voyage of Dr. Tiger” and publisher Domei Shuppansha purchased “The Mysterious Dr. Koronko”. While he was still studying in medical school , Tezuka published his first masterpiece: a science-fiction trilogy called “Lost World”, “Metropolis”, and “Next World”.

In 1951, Tezuka graduated from the Osaka School of Medicine and published ”Ambassador Atom”, the first appearance of the Astro Boy character. The humanoid robot Atom with human emotions became extremely popular with young boys. In February of 1952, “Tetsuwan Atom” became a serial in the  Weekly Shonen Magazine. The character Atom and his adventures became an instant phenomenon in Japan.

Tezuka entered the animation industry in Japan in 1961, founding Mushi Productions. He innovated the industry with the broadcast of the animated version of “Astro Boy” in 1963, the first Japanese animation to be dubbed into English for an American audience. Other series were later translated to animation, including “Jungle Emperor”, the first Japanese animated series produced in full color.

Osamu Tezuka is a descendent of Hattori Hanzō, a famous ninja and samurai who faithfully served the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu during the Sengoku period in Japan. Tokugawa Ieyasu was one of the three unifiers of Japan in the late 1500s.

Maritus Zusak: “And We Climbed Out of Those Shower Facilities”

 

Photographer Unknown, (The Morning Shower)

When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity’s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower.”

― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

Pat Conroy: The Lowcountry Had Its Own Special Ache and Sting”

Photographer Unknown, (The Lowcountry)

“I loved these salt rivers more than I loved the sea; I loved the movement of tides more than I loved the fury of surf. Something in me was congruent with this land, something affirmed when I witnessed the startled, piping rush of shrimp or the flash of starlight on the scales of mullet. I could feel myself relax and change whenever I returned to the lowcountry and saw the vast green expanses of marsh, feminine as lace, delicate as calligraphy. The lowcountry had its own special ache and sting.”

― Pat Conroy, The Lords of Discipline

Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret

Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret, “Orpheus’s Sorrow”, 1876, Oil on Canvas, Dahesh Museum, New York City

Born in Paris in January of 1852, Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret was one of the leading French artists of the naturalist school. The son of a tailor, he was raised by his grandfather and later took his grandfather’s name, Bouveret, as his own. Beginning in 1869, Dagnan-Bouveret studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under historic and religious painter Alexandre Cabanel and Academic painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme. 

Dagnan-Bouveret began exhibiting in 1875 at the Paris Salon where he won the 1880 first-class medal for his painting “An Accident”, an everyday life scene of a doctor tending to a wounded boy. In 1885 he won a medal of honor for his painting “Horses at the Watering Trough”. Beginning in the 1880s, Dagnan-Bouveret maintained a studio with Gustave Courtois in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris considered the most affluent and prestigious of the residential areas. 

Adolphe Dagnan-Bouveret was considered by the 1880s as a leading modern artist known for both his peasant scenes and mystical-religious compositions. Like many of his contemporaries, he was fascinated by the religious customs of Brittany in northern France. Throughout the 1880s, Dagnan-Bouveret painted a series of portraits and scenes depicting the women of Brittany wearing their traditional regional dress and white head coverings. He was one of the first artists to use the new medium of photography to bring a greater realism to his work.

After his initial visit to Brittany in 1885, Dagnan-Bouveret turned his attention to that most westerly part of France, a complete change from his earlier works from the Franche-Comté region in the far east of the country. He painted a series of modern interpretations of religious work. One of these is the 1888 “Madonna of the Trellis” which depicts the Virgin Mary embracing the infant Christ under the dense foliage of a trellis. The Madonna is not dressed in the traditional blue but rather in white and has a contemporary appearance. 

Adolphe Dagnan-Bouveret painted some modern history works, the most notable being his 1889 “Conscripts” which depicts young men, just conscripted into the army, marching behind a drummer and a boy carrying the national flag. Dagnan-Bouveret did not exhibit it for two years. He entered it in 1891 at the re-organized Salon run by the Societé Nationale des Beaux-Arts, where the painting’s successful reception made it the focus of French nationalism. In 1891, Dagnan-Bouveret was made an Officer of the Legion of Honor, one of the highest French decorations,

After 1893, Dagnan-Bouveret abandoned naturalism and devoted his efforts to religious works. He exhibited his painting “The Last Supper” at the Salon de Champ-de-Mars in 1896. Probably Dagnan-Bouveret’s most spectacular religious painting, it followed the artistic tradition but contained more contemporary styled figures lit from a  source of golden  light not indicated in the painting. 

Adolphe Dagnan-Bouveret became a member in 1900 of the Institut de France, a learned society encompassing the five academies of arts and science. He died at the age of seventy-seven on the third of July in 1929. 

Dagnan-Bouveret’s work is housed in a number of private collections, including that of art collector George McCulloch, and in several public collections including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum in London, the Art Institute in Chicago, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and the Musée d’Orsay. 

Top Insert Image: Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret, “Woman from Brittany”, 1886, Oil on Canvas, 36.2 x 27.9 cm, Art Institute of Chicago

Bottom Insert Image: Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret “Breton Women at a Pardon”, 1887, Oil on Canvas, 125.1 x 141.1 cm, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Spain

Calendar: November 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of November

He Says “Woof”

November 2, 1947 marks the first and only flight of the Hughes H-4 Hercules, known as the Spruce Goose.

In 1942, the U.S. War Department needed to transport war material and personnel to Britain. A requirement was issued for an aircraft that could cross the Atlantic with a large payload; however, because of wartime priorities, the aircraft could not be made from strategic materials such as aluminum. Henry J. Kaiser, a leading ship builder, teamed with aircraft designer Howard Hughes to create the largest aircraft ever built at that time.

The aircraft was designed to carry 150,000 pounds, 750 fully equipped troops, or two 30-ton M4 Sherman tanks. The final design was to be built mostly of wood to conserve metal, with its elevators and rudder covered with fabric. The construction of the first prototype, the HK-1, took sixteen months. Henry Kaiser, frustrated by the long delays and the restrictions on materials, decided to withdraw from the project.

Howard Hughes continued the program on his own, under a new contract limiting the production to one plane, now the H-4 Hercules. Work proceeded slowly and the H-4 was not completed until the war was over. The plane was built by the Hughes Aircraft Company using composite technology for the laminated wood construction. The finished plane was moved in three sections to Pier E in Long Beach, California, where a hanger was erected around it with a ramp to launch the H-4 into the harbor. In all, development cost for the plane was twenty-three million dollars, or more than ten times that in today dollars.

On November 2, 1947, with Howard Hughes at the controls, and a crew of seven, and fourteen invited guests, the Hercules picked up speed and lifted off. The Hercules remained airborne for 26 seconds at a height of seventy feet above the water and a speed of 135 miles per hour. At this altitude the aircraft still experienced ground effect. This brief flight proved that the now uneeded aircraft was flight worthy. The Hercules H-4 never flew again; its lifting capacity and ceiling height were never tested.

The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has the Hughes H-1 Racer and a section of theH-4’s wing. The Aero Club of Southern California acquired the Hercules H-4 aircraft in 1980, displaying it in a very large geodesic dome in Long Beach, California. The club later arranged for the aircraft to be given to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon where it is currently on display. The 315,000 square foot aircraft hanger where the Hercules H-4 was built, located in the Playa Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles,  is on the National Register of Historical Buildings.